Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, CH (7 July 1871 – 7 October 1954) was an English sociological researcher, social reformer and industrialist.

During the First World War he was Director of the Welfare Department at the Ministry of Munitions, under the leadership of David Lloyd George.

He carried out a comprehensive survey into the living conditions of the poor in York during which investigators visited every working class household.

The money needed for this subsistence level of existence covered fuel and light, rent, food, clothing, household and personal items, adjusted according to family size.

For example, he consulted leading nutritionists of the period to discover the minimum calorific intake and nutritional balance necessary before people got ill or lost weight.

Rowntree's (1901) statistics have since been challenged by other sociological researchers such as Gazeley and Newell (2000) who argued he "overestimated the needs of children relative to adults and did not allow for economies of scale", resulting in inflated measurement of primary poverty.

Those classed as in secondary poverty had high enough income to meet basic needs but some portion of this money was being spent elsewhere (such as on drink, gambling, and betting) and so they were unable to then afford the necessities of life.

[2] Ironically, this primary poverty line also helped many manufactures to set the lowest possible minimum wage, which engendered many criticisms toward him.

The conquest of poverty was put down to an expanding economy as the 1950s were the years of the 'affluent society', to government policies of full employment, and to the success of the welfare state.

It was widely believed that the operation of the welfare state had redistributed wealth from rich to poor and significantly raised working class living standards.

His work The Human Needs of Labour (1918) argued for family allowances and a national minimum wage, and in The Human Factor in Business, Rowntree argued that business owners should adopt more democratic practices like those at his own factory rather than more autocratic leadership styles.

[4] In 1930 he co-wrote, with Lloyd George and Philip Kerr, the Liberal Party's plan How to Tackle Unemployment.

[18] Rowntree's Quaker upbringing influenced his business practice; he believed that the existence of companies which paid low wages was bad for the "nation's economy and humanity".

[24] He was also heavily involved in the National Institute of Industrial Psychology serving on its executive committee from its foundation in 1921, as chairman from 1940 to 1947, until his resignation in 1949.